There is considerable confusion when referring to 2-spored Laccaria species (though L. tortilis is relatively straightforward), with the names striatula/pumila/lateritia/fraterna/ohiensis et al. bandied about in various books and papers. My collection fits well with Orton’s description of L. striatula as his spore dimensions are there or thereabouts.

I contacted Dr Jerry Cooper, a one-time fellow Yorkshire mycologist friend who is now doing stirling work in New Zealand. His preliminary work on Laccaria in NZ can be downloaded here:http://www.funnz.org.nz/sites/default/f ... ccaria.pdf His collections of L. pumila are on pages 16 and 17. He comments as follows:
"Your collection looks like mine.
Nobody has sorted this one out. It needs a sequenced epitype.
There are currently three groups in GenBank labelled L. pumila. One is nonsense and is near L. laccata var pallidifolia and I bet wasn’t even 2 spored. Then there are two groups within a clade with L. montana, and with material from Greg M. That makes more sense. One of these is probably the real L. pumila. One group is north American. Mine is in the other group along with material from France. I’d say it was a better candidate for the real version. Like yours mine has smaller spores than it should.
Greg M[ueller] talked about L. pumila in the attached paper with massively variable spore measurements.
I’d stick with your name."
A relevant bit of Mueller's paper referred to above can be seen here:

I suspect that the Laccaria fraterna of Fungi of Switzerland vol. 3 and described as occurring in wet places with Salix and Alnus is also L. pumila as here understood; in this country we tend to use the name L. fraterna for the 2-spored fungus found (exclusively?) with Eucalyptus in parks and gardens.

I would encourage others to have a good look at Laccaria species they might find, especially those growing with Salix or Alnus in damp areas. The old attitude of "it's The Deceiver we can name it in the field" might be a bit suspect - I very nearly fell for it myself in this case .

Spent the morning under Salix of various sorts at the Arboretum and under one group three fruitbodies of Laccaria
Spores c8.5 two spored basidia then four spored basidia by the bucket load so this time just L laccata. I could have visited the eucalyptus towards the end of the Arboretum at least I know the two spored L tortilis grows there
Next time maybe.
Mal

Chris
On the Sphagnum raft on Strensall common a lot of Laccaria which I had looked at the spores of and concluded L laccata This time I looked a little closer. Two spored basidia spores mostly spherical some subspherical 8.5-10 small spores.